Entitled ‘Unravelling the Special Relationship: British Reaction to the Kennedy Assassination’, this year’s Bolt Lecture will be given by Professor Clive Webb, Professor of Modern American History at the University of Sussex.
We’re delighted to welcome Professor Webb to the University of Kent for this public lecture which will take place on Thursday, 22nd January 2015 at 6pm in Lecture Theatre 3, The Grimond Building.
A wine reception will follow, to which all are welcome.
Writes Professor Webb; On 5 May 1965, a warming spring sun welcomed dignitaries to Runnymede for a carefully staged ceremony to dedicate Britain’s commemorative tribute to the late John F. Kennedy. Just eighteen months after the American president had been assassinated in Dallas, Texas, Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh accompanied Kennedy’s widow Jackie and her two young children through the trees to a temporary stand adjacent to Geoffrey Jellicoe’s newly built memorial. With them were the president’s two brothers, Robert and Edward, and the US ambassador to Britain, Dean Rusk. In their short speeches that day every speaker drew attention to the close ties between the United States and Great Britain.
While this official commemoration appeared to demonstrate the continued importance of the Special Relationship between the two countries, grassroots reaction to the Kennedy assassination reveals a more complicated story. While there was much admiration for Kennedy, many Britons were by no means enamoured of either the president or the United States. There was open criticism in Britain of Kennedy’s foreign and domestic policies from elements on the left and right of the political continuum. The president’s faltering response to the African American civil rights movement, for example, was widely criticised by members of the UK’s own nascent Afro-Caribbean community as well as progressive whites. When the British government sought to mark Kennedy’s passing by creating a national memorial, the underwhelming popular response to its ambitious fund-raising campaign uncovered a wide seam of grassroots opposition to the late president, his family and the United States.
The Bolt Lecture is held in memory of Christine Bolt, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Kent, and her late husband Ian Bolt, who generously funded the University’s Christine and Ian Bolt Scholarships.